Shinjuku Mitsui Building, Skyscraper in Nishi-Shinjuku, Japan.
The Shinjuku Mitsui Building is a 55-story tower in Nishi-Shinjuku, 225 m to its architectural top, with black glass facades crossed by X-shaped steel braces on the east and west sides. Its entrance lobby is on the second floor, and the lower floors hold banks, restaurants and clinics while the rest is office space. A sunken garden and a large plaza sit at its base.
Mitsui Fudosan bought plot 9 of the former Yodobashi waterworks site for 5.8 billion yen in March 1968, and the tower was finished in October 1974 despite material shortages after the first oil shock. It stood as Japan's tallest building until Sunshine 60 opened in March 1978. In October 2020 it was sold to the Japan Building Fund REIT for 170 billion yen, and Mitsui Fudosan kept operating it under the same name.
Since 1975 the building has hosted an annual karaoke contest in the sunken 55 Plaza, open to employees of tenant firms only. Teams from tenant companies compete each late August, judged mostly on singing, with entrants sometimes joining a firm just to take part.
The building is an 8-minute walk from Shinjuku Station, 1 minute from Toei Oedo Line's Tochomae Station, and 2 minutes from Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line's Nishi-Shinjuku Station. The entrance lobby is on the second floor, reached by stairs or escalator from the street. Paid parking is available.
Six large pendulums were added to the roof in 2013 to control building sway during earthquakes. These movement-dampening devices work silently above, an unseen safety feature that reflects Japan's approach to building in earthquake country.
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